The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree--#99 finished

The author is from Kenya, a tribe there called Maasai.  A rural kind of nomadic tribe, they raise goats & cows mostly.  The author talks about her life and family.  Her dad was a kind of leader and someone that tried to modernize the tribe--he helped setup a sort of nature preserve where tourists would come and see local wild animals.  He also believed in education and wanted this for his kids.  Both her dad and then mom died while she was young and her relatives that raised her were not as open to this.  This was a very traditional culture where girls were married very young and basically were then tied to the home.  This tribe also practiced what they called the Cut, a severe form of Female Genital Mutilation FGM.  The author saw this done when she was very young and was scared from there of this happening.  When the uncle she was living with wanted this to happen to her, she hid in a tree and then at light ran away.  She ran away a couple times but eventually a grandfather let her avoid this.  For this reason she was kind of shunned at their villages but also was able to continue her education.  She continued on to get her college degree and then started working for a NGO and worked to end FGM in her tribe and became a spokes person for this worldwide.  A really good and uplifting story, glad I read this book.

There are 3 WL for this book on PBS but for now keeping it.  Maybe one of my kids would want to read it.